I just sent an email out to a bunch of people, I love the quick add feature. I typed in "doctors appt at 1pm on April 20th" and it put it right into the right place and time! Now I can dump my MSN calendar!

Oh yeah, just love the SMS alert funtion too, but MSN had that as well.

Don't know if Google is watching this thread. But I have had some bugs to report.

Apparently "server failure" has happened twice today. Instead of creating one event it creates 6. I have to go back and delete the extra ones.

I am unable to edit a title of an event in the advanced editing section. I tried in vain to edit the title of an event I created and its doesn't work.

Additionally, there could be better support for entering times. For example if I enter a time "8pmDinnerwithBob". I accidently left out a space, the application doesnt pull the time out, it uses it as the complete title.

For the pessimists amongst us, lets take a negative look on this addition to Google's growing collection of value-added services.

Issue:
Almost all of Google's income stems from its advertising network "AdWords" – it is the life blood of the company. Although currently dominant in the market, other engines are taking a marketing sheet out of the Avis book - “We're the 2nd biggest, so we try harder”. Yahoo is trying to keep up with the giant through the acquisition of Overture as well as the tweaking/re-branding of its Paid Inclusion and PPC service, although MSN's new AdCenter seems to show the most promise.

MSN may not be the search engine of choice for most people, but with Microsoft now fully behind its relatively insignificant online revenue source, things are starting to hot up. The search provider is making sure that they keep the big SEM Agencies happy through good Customer Service and listening to what AdCenter features the clients want (unlike Google IMHO). More importantly, they have enough money to buy out other Ad Networks/Search Portals plus use their secret weapon - Microsoft Passport.

Passport offers surprisingly accurate and detailed information about millions of internet users across the globe. Microsoft made sure that no matter what online services it offered, the user needed a "Passport" to access it. Think about how many people use Hotmail, Windows XP or chat on MSN Messenger. Even corporate users and partners need a Passport login to access comprehensive manuals and licensing areas. With MSN planning to use this data to offer demographic matching to its advertisers, a new form of campaign optimisation is released to the world.

If Google had launched similar abilities last year, there would be no stopping the empire from gaining even more market share. Unfortunately the "Do No Evil" motto which Google held so dear meant that they never really looked to catch visitor data. The first attempt of this was with Gmail and Google Homepage, although even this offered little insight into the end-user. How old are they? Which part of the country are they from? Are they employed? Do they have children? This is the information that advertisers need in order to further enhance CPA, and performance. Google didn't have to publish this data or even offer more then just an age group, gender or estimated income.

The Solution:
In order to mend this hole in their armor, Google needed to launch a central user information repository similar to Microsoft Passport. They didn't have an operating system to request registration after installation or a widely used software suite however. The only way to get this data would be to launch new online services backed by intrigue, suspense and daily PR leaks and hype. Using the old age marketing trick of restricting access through an invitation-only and high demand queue meant that users would trample over each other to enter their details – not thinking of it as they would with every other data capture form you come across each day on the world wide web.

Conclusion:
Google Calendar is a very nice service which I'm sure will become very popular – just bear in mind that they probably aren't looking to make money out of sticking some AdWords on the tool. Let's face it, who actually clicks on the adverts in Gmail? Also, will Google connect your mobile number for Calendar SMS features to their new “Click-To-Call” (Pay Per Call adverts) service?

Of course, this is just one outsiders personal opinion – I could be totally wrong, with a tin foil hat keeping government and alien brain control signals out of my head.

10 kinds of people in the world. Those who know binary numbers, and those who don't

Join Date: Jan 2006

Location: Salt Lake City

Posts: 322

Please don't tell anyone where I work about this.
There are some great features, that I don't want to have to integrate into our extranet calendar just now. Common Google, stop making such great stuff that the rest of us have to copy.